How do we make decisions during times when we are uncertain? A new study may have clues. Researchers identified a specific set of neurons that prevent the brain from using unreliable information when faced with decision-making.
Unexpected uncertainty is a motivator for change that prompts us to change our decisions and behaviors, even when changing the decision does not provide a better outcome.
In times of uncertainty, noradrenaline helps us learn and adapt our behaviors, researchers report.
Neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex respond more to loss than to gain. Avoidance of risk-taking is affected by an area of the hippocampus that is associated with memory and anxiety. The findings suggest a close relationship between memory processing and decision making when risk is present, especially in stressful situations. The fresh insights might help guide new psychiatric therapies for disorders marked by excessive avoidance, such as anxiety, and depression, and also mania and addiction, where excessive risk-taking is a common feature.
When it comes to decision making, researchers discovered toddlers experience and deal with uncertainty in the same way as older children and adults.
Those who find it hard to cope with uncertainty over possible future threats could have an unusually large striatum, a new study reports.
A new study reports on the role acetylcholine, dopamine and noradrenaline play in uncertainty.
Researchers report being uncertain of receiving a painful shock causes more stress than pain.
